


The Mysterious Disappearance of Shane Madej

by waitforhightide



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Anxiety Disorder, First Kiss, First Time, Hand Jobs, Love Confessions, M/M, Major Character Injury, Mentally Ill Ryan Bergara, Panic Attacks, Pining, RPF, Showers, Supernatural Elements, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-11-01 17:36:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17871764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waitforhightide/pseuds/waitforhightide
Summary: The thing about Ryan Bergara was that he didn't trust his own brain.So when he arrived at the office and asked TJ if he’d seen Shane yet, and TJ said, “Who?” Ryan’s reaction was first to look around for cameras, and second, for Shane. For the reality check, for the affirmation that TJ had said what Ryan himself had heard.





	1. I live paranoid, hesitating

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [You've Been Starring in My Dreams](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17749406) by [drunkkenobi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/drunkkenobi/pseuds/drunkkenobi). 



> So this is my first RPF ever and also my first BFU fic ever… Archive locked for RPF not content fwiw.
> 
> Chapter titles so far from CAROUSEL by Travis Scott.
> 
> Huge thanks to [drunkkenobi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/drunkkenobi/pseuds/drunkkenobi), who wrote the fic that inspired this; [cantarina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cantarina/pseuds/cantarina), who wrote the original prompt; and [bessyboo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bessyboo/pseuds/bessyboo) and [revolutionaryjo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RevolutionaryJo/pseuds/RevolutionaryJo) for early beta-ing and Twitter encouragement.

The thing about Ryan Bergara was that he didn’t trust his own brain.

He understood that this was not entirely a normal thing to feel. Most people, he’d learned through trial, error, and lots of confused looks as he drunkenly (and sometimes soberly) tried to explain himself, didn’t even think of their minds as separate entities from them _selves,_ let alone separate entities that could be distrusted. If they counted something, they trusted they’d gotten the right number and didn’t have to count a second or third time. If they looked left and right before they crossed the street, they didn’t have the stomach-dropping panic that they had seen a car and just not registered it properly, and were about to be turned to Ryan-mush on the pavement. They didn’t take videos of themselves turning off their ovens and locking their doors in the mornings with Snapchat timestamps on them just to verify they’d done it.

Well. Some people did that, he thought as he recorded his himself locking and checking his door on a Monday morning in March. That was how he’d found the trick, after all: he’d Googled “anxious about door lock” and “can’t trust my memory” and “how to not go home to turn off your stove ten times in a week” and had discovered people with various anxiety disorders discussing their favorite methods of self-reassurance. Ryan, who all but breathed filming and media, found that there was something calming and real about replaying the five-second video on his phone in his Lyft with the static 8:03am fake-digital-clock timestamp squarely in the center.

But the point was that _most_ people didn’t do these things, and he knew that. And he was okay with that, usually. He’d learned to cope by himself most of the time and trust people who _did_ trust their brains the rest of the time. People like Jake, and TJ, and Shane. Especially Shane, in fact. For all the crap Shane gave him, and all the banter they traded about ghosts and lack thereof, Ryan really did lean on him for reality checks more often than anyone else.

So when he arrived at the office and asked TJ if he’d seen Shane yet, and TJ said, “Who?” Ryan’s reaction was first to look around for cameras, and second, for Shane. For the reality check, for the affirmation that TJ had said what Ryan himself had heard.

“Shane, man, _Shane._ Y’know, about this tall—” He held his hand high above his head. “—kin to Bigfoot, chronic skeptic to my believer or whatever.” TJ was just looking at him with an eyebrow raised, waiting for a punchline. There wasn’t one, of course, but there was a growing feeling of dread and panic in Ryan’s gut.

“You okay, man?” TJ asked after a few moments of silence spun out between them.

“I—no?” Ryan said, voice squeaky. He thought, _Damn I’m glad Shane isn’t here to make fun of me for that,_ and then the panic spiked in his head like ink blooming in water because _Shane wasn’t there_ and he fled TJ’s presence for the Unsolved set without really thinking about it as fleeing. He wasn’t sure why the set was his first instinct, Shane was more likely to be at his desk, especially this early in the morning ( _and without me!_ Ryan insisted to himself), but the set was… safe. Closed. _Theirs._ And so he went there first, collapsing into his chair and pulling out his phone. He opened his texts, meaning to text Shane, but he couldn’t find the thread, so he opened his contacts and typed out _Madej_ instead.

Nothing came up.

“What.” Ryan breathed, more of an exhale than a word. He stared dumbly at it for moment and then switched to Facebook, meaning to message Shane there instead. His name didn’t come up there, either. Ditto to Instagram and Twitter. Even his Reddit account was gone. Ryan put his phone down on the desk, tried to focus on his breathing, and glanced around, once again looking for cameras.

As far as he could tell, there were none besides the stationary ones that were set up to film the episodes, and those were dark and lifeless, with none of their blinking LEDs to set him at ease. The rest of the set was also just as Ryan had left it the week before, when they’d traveled to Portland to film on-location for Supernatural. There was a map of Oregon spread out on the table, and the old green-shaded research lamp illuminated the bulletin board at the back of the room the way it always had— 

But something about the board was wrong. Ryan stumbled forward to look at it more closely. And—yeah, the un-crumpled post-it Shane had pinned there with wild Mothman nicknames in Season 4 was gone. There were, in fact, none of Shane’s habitual post-its were anywhere on set, which was practically impossible. Whenever Ryan went through the room for something, or suggested rearranging props, there was always a post-it or five hidden under or behind something inconspicuous.

Ryan Bergara did not trust his brain, but he believed it well enough when it more or less filled him with a weather siren, proclaiming, _Something is wrong._

. . .

It was an hour and a half before he could get ahold of Sara in person. She was in a meeting and then recording something that couldn’t be moved. In that time, Ryan tried—and failed—to find something to calm himself down. Something to help him trust his brain again.

He found nothing.

At his desk he played through as many episodes and Post Mortems as he could in the background on low volume and 2x speed as he Googled on his phone and waited in a panic for Sara to answer the texts and emails he’d sent her. He kept waiting for Shane to show up on the episodes, or for a hint of the editing someone must have done to pull off this prank, but there was nothing. Nothing on Google either. No hint that Ryan had ever had a consistent co-host on Unsolved except for the very earliest ones, with Brent, and Sports Conspiracies, with Zack. Instead, it was him alone, either on set or on location, with various crew members, like Devon and TJ, joining him for the Q & As.

He was so overwhelmed as he scrolled through his own social media in search of Shane that when Sara put her hand on his shoulder he screamed.

“Jesus, Ryan,” she said as he took off his headphones. “It’s just me. I saw you messaged me a bunch but I wasn’t clear why, so I thought I should come find you.”

“Have you—?” Ryan started, but his voice was lost in the dry rasp of his throat. He cleared his throat and tried again as Sara’s eyebrows drew together in a frown. “Have you heard from Shane lately?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know who that is.”

“ _Shane,_ Christ, _Shane!_ ”

“I heard you,” Sara said carefully. “But I don’t know who Shane is, Ryan.” He glanced up and saw no hint of humor in her face.

“You _dated_ him,” Ryan said, trying to sound exasperated but mostly sounding panicked. Which was fair, since he’d been feeling nothing but panic for… several hours now. It thrummed under his skin the way it did on demon-y locations and in dark, unkempt buildings. There was clammy sweat at his hairline and under his arms, but he shivered in the office air-conditioning. His head was filled with it, like drunkenness turned sour, making it hazy and hard to think.

Sara shook her head. “I haven’t dated anyone since Ashley Perez and I had our thing,” she said. Not arguing, just stating. That was… that was nice. It was easier to absorb than justify right now. “Ryan, what’s wrong?”

“I don’t— I have no idea,” he said, looking up at her from where he still sat in his desk chair, Shane’s things conspicuously missing from the next desk over and also Ryan’s own desk—a tote bag from their early merch run, for example, and a stuffed hot dog Shane had won from a crane game and given to Ryan out of spite.

“Alright,” Sara said decisively, straightening up. “Email TJ and HR, I’m taking you home.”

“Sara, c’mon, I have to—”

“It’s home or the hospital, Bergara,” she raid, quietly enough that no one else could hear her. Ryan opened his mouth and closed it again. She said nothing, only pressed her lips together and stared him down.

He was home within the hour, and after texting Sara to thank her—again—for taking him home, he was lost on the tide of panic.

. . .

The thing about being anxious _all the time_ was that one developed coping mechanisms. Ryan hadn’t been in terror-grips for this long in years, but old habits die hard and all that, so when he found himself listening to a song on repeat on his headphones while he played a mindless puzzle game on the couch at 4am, a crick in his neck and soreness at his tailbone that came from not moving much in the last, oh, 18 hours, he knew he had a problem. And that problem was not that he was freaking the absolute fuck out, but how to convince people to _listen_ to someone who was very obviously freaking the fuck out. When he finally peeled himself from the couch to use the bathroom and caught a glance of himself in the mirror, he had to admit he did not find himself particularly credible. His hair was disheveled, his eyes were red, and he was trembling.

God, he wanted Shane. 

That was the worst part of this slowly-dawning realization that something was horribly wrong and that something might or might not be his sanity—either way, it meant Shane wasn’t there to talk him out of it. In the bright light of his bathroom, the theories—God, fuck, even the word _theory_ made his chest ache—the _ideas_ that had been swarming around his head like hornets started to untangle and sting him, one by one, as he clenched his hands against the counter and zoned out over his reflection’s shoulder.

The first theory was that he was irrevocably, certifiably insane. He knew there was a better way to say it, knew from research—about about his own weird brain and for Unsolved—that the idea of sane/insane was problematic at best and a catch-all for people you disliked at worst. Still, it boiled down to the same thing, didn’t it? Because the first theory was that he had stumbled upon the ultimate _don’t listen to your own mind_ moment and discovered that he, Ryan Steven Bergara, had either falsely remembered or entirely made up the tall, stoic, logical, nerdy, _wonderful_ Shane Madej. In this theory, the world was going on the same way it had yesterday and the day before; Ryan could just finally join it properly, without whatever lanky, bony, ridiculously kind and funny delusion had gotten in the way.

 _Oh, come on, Bergara,_ said a voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like the aforementioned delusion. _Is that all you got? You woke up one morning and were just… suddenly crazy?_

“That’s the _second_ theory, asshole,” he mumbled to himself, too exhausted to think about whether answering Shane’s voice in his head made him more or less nuts. “The first theory is I woke up sane.”

 _Two sides, same coin, my friend,_ brain-Shane said sagely. 

Call it Theory 1.5, then.

Theory 2.0 was that this was all a bit. That the whole office was in on it, that even Shane himself had lent a hand in editing all the Unsolved content he could get his hands on so it looked like it had been Ryan, solo, for years. But it wasn’t just Unsolved episodes—the entire internet, including Ryan’s iCloud and everything he had been able to find on the Wayback Machine, seemed devoid of Shane Madej’s existence. Considering he was—had been?—mildly internet famous, this seemed like an unlikely theory. 

_I’m gonna—yeah, I’m gonna say no,_ brain-Shane agreed. It was not lost on Ryan that the Shane in his head was much more agreeable to his weird theories than real Shane, but he wasn’t gonna look at that too hard. Yet. The agreement was good, even if it was all in his head.

Theory #3 was… well, supernatural. Something inexplicable had happened, something that, if it wasn’t so goddamn awful, Ryan may have jumped on as solid proof of otherworldly powers or demonic forces. As it was, he preferred this theory, if only because it was the easiest to work with. He couldn’t bring Shane back if Shane was a delusion or a hallucination, and he couldn’t force himself out of whatever episode he was having if _not_ having Shane around was the delusion. But supernatural forces, well, those were things Ryan was… not _comfortable_ with, not remotely, but _familiar_ with. If it was supernatural, he could fix it. He would hate every moment of it, but… it could be rectified.

Right?

 _Puttin’ a lot of faith in your ghosts there, Ryan,_ Shane’s voice said.

“Fuck you, you prick,”Ryan rasped, but his voice cracked at the end of the sentence.

God, he missed Shane.

. . .

Ryan allowed himself to panic to exhaustion, feigning fever for work when he realized around 5 a.m. that there was still no way he was going to be calm enough to sleep until his body straight-up failed him. TJ emailed back at a human hour, still long before Ryan got to sleep, saying to take as long as he needed. Ryan guessed that whatever Sara had said to him when she went back to the office was enough to make him back off. He was both grateful and annoyed, as if he was putting off an air of crazy that was finally too strong for his friends. He was thinking of a good argument for his sanity to put forward in an email to Sara when he finally succumbed to a desperate, fitful sleep on his living room couch. His dreams were jumbled and confusing, and when he awoke he fumbled with his phone, going to text Shane automatically. _Man, you wouldn’t believe the fucked-up dream I had last night, let's never drink that much tequila again—_

But Shane’s name didn’t come up in his phone, just a couple texts from co-workers telling him to get well soon. 

That was… Okay, that was not ideal. He was kind of hoping theory 1.5 or whatever was a temporary thing, that whatever fit of sanity or insanity had gripped him would pass after some sleep, but obviously either that was untrue, or it was the wrong theory.

 _Alright, new theory!_ brain-Shane agreed. Ryan could almost hear him clapping his hands together, rubbing them with fake excitement—or real enthusiasm, if it was after a particularly dumb theory—and Ryan’s throat tightened, an awful head blooming behind his eyes.

No, nope, nope, he was _not_ going to cry, that was _stupid._

But. A new theory. Since his brain seemed unconquerable and nothing his coworkers had done in the last 36 hours gave any indication that they were pulling his leg, that left Theory 3. There was some supernatural bullshit going on, and Ryan wasn’t sure if he had ever been more determined to prove it. The thing was, he had never actually gotten _proof_ of the things he’d seen. So how did he start?

 _What, the research king is gonna try and do an investigation with no research? Where’s your script, man! The facts! The graphics, for God’s sake!_ The Shane-voice in his head had its over-the-top Midwestern character voice, and a renewed sense of desperate despair bloomed in his chest. But Shane was right. He couldn’t just blunder into this. He had to prepare, dig, put together possible stories—more like True Crime than Supernatural. What happened, what was the official story, and how many spins were there out there?

Ryan grabbed his laptop from his bag and his brain was already scrambling to keep his ideas in order as he opened a new document and got to work.

 _The Mysterious Disappearance of Shane Madej,_ he thought, and he swore he could hear Shane’s laughter.


	2. We did it, we said it, we spoke

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief mention of vomit, lots of real/not real? sanity questioning and such. I don’t write BFU episodes, this was hard, validate me with comments pls

When he came back into the office on Wednesday morning, his panic had shifted to something manic, which, while still uncomfortable, was much more recognizable to his co-workers. It wasn’t as if Ryan never got hyper-focused on things, especially when those things were creepy and mysterious, so when TJ asked him how he was feeling and Ryan said he was ass-deep in research with that wild grin on his face and his fifth cup of coffee in his hand, Teej just shrugged.

“Alright, man, let me know if you want us to research anything for you on this one.”

Ryan shook his head. “Nah, dude, I’ve got this. But I might need your help later.”

And that was all it took to get the Unsolved crew off his back as he cloistered himself in Ghoul HQ and went to work.

Searching for mysterious disappearances, as a whole, didn’t work super well. As he suspected, and had gleaned from tons of research for True Crime, disappearances could have theories ranging from runaway to murder to aliens, and more. And of course, in most disappearances, people _knew the victim had disappeared._ In this case, it was as if Shane had been _erased,_ as if he was an accidental shot of a cameraman in a video that had been strategically edited and ‘shopped out. And the editing was good, because only Ryan seemed to notice.

Soon it seemed less accurate to call his absence a disappearance and closer to the point to call his appearance an apparition.

 _Yeah, and only to you,_ brain-Shane said in his best skeptic voice. Ryan ignored him and went back to his research.

Since he was the strongest primary source on the existence of Shane Alexander Madej, Ryan had started by info-dumping as much as he could: everything he could remember about Shane, his family, his upbringing in Schaumburg. He kept that long, unorganized section of his research open while he rewrote it, first as if he was writing a Wikipedia article (where he would normally start for True Crime, and some of Supernatural) and then as bits of an episode. It was odd scripting without Shane, without thinking of moments to let his co-host slide in with innuendos or skeptical comments, but he pushed through anyway. Then, once he had gotten things more or less in order, he started the deep dive.

He didn’t reach out to witnesses and experts often, only when he felt that the online evidence was lacking, and there really couldn’t be anything more lacking than “entirely non-existent,” so Ryan polished off his vague journalism skills, wrote a form letter, and sent it out to as many prominent figures in Shane’s life as he could think of.

> _Hi, my name is Ryan Bergara and I work for Buzzfeed in LA! I do a weekly video show on unsolved crimes and supernatural phenomena. I’m doing a segment abou the Mandela Effect, where some people remember details of history differently (i.e. Berenstain vs Berenstein Bears or Nelson Mandela dying in 1981 vs 2013)._
> 
> _The issue I’m researching is the existence of someone named Shane Alexander Madej, who some people recall doing a similar internet show to mine, despite the fact that my team and I have no memory of him or his show (Sorry Shane,_ he thought as he wrote). _I’m reaching out to you because [of your last name /some people say he came from Schaumberg, IL / because ___________]. Any rumors or information you have, even just a memory of the name, would help._
> 
> _Thank you so much!_
> 
> _Ryan Bergara_

He sent it to Shane’s parents and brother, who he had to dig up on Facebook, which was stupid because he knew for a fact he was Facebook friends with Scott. _Not if you were never friends with Shane,_ he reminded himself grimly. He also sent it to all the other Madejs he could find on their profiles, the principal of the high school Shane had gone to, four people who all had the same name as one of Shane’s college roommates, and several other supernatural and true crime podcasters and video makers, just in case.

They were in the middle of a season of Supernatural, and he could only ignore the crew for so long. Finally, on Friday morning, Devon came down to HQ and knocked perfunctorily on the doorframe.

“Yeah?” Ryan asked, taking his headphones off but not really looking away from his screen.

“You ready to leave for Kansas tomorrow?” she asked, with a knowing tone in her voice. Ryan did a double take between her and the date on his computer.

“Fuck,” he said.

“You forgot.”

“I didn’t forget, I—”

“ _Jesus Christ,_ Ryan, it’s _your show._ ”

 _Our show,_ he thought, and it was equal parts his internal voice and the echo of Shane, which was—he was trying not to notice, but it was growing fainter, blending more into just the voice his own head used when it thought in full sentences, like paint mixing until you couldn’t see the separate parts. “I know,” he said out loud, taking the headphones off and standing up from the desk. “I know, Devon, I’m sorry.”

She made a face Ryan couldn’t decipher and then exhaled heavily. “It’s fine,” she said. “Just—are you sure you want to go on location? We can pull a backup script, do an office episode—”

Ryan shook his head, as much to clear it as in denial. “We’ve been negotiating with Sauer for like a year, we can’t just not go.”

Devon, pragmatic and also facilitator of most of those conversations, had nothing to add to that. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I’ll meet you at the airport, what time do you want to be there?”

They made travel arrangements and sent a text to the crew group chat, and then Ryan was alone in HQ again. Part of him wanted to sit down again and lose himself in the labyrinth of minutia he was digging through to find Shane— _to find_ proof _of Shane,_ that voice said. _Can’t find someone who doesn’t exist, can you, Bergara?_ And it sounded joking, but it made Ryan shudder, and an uncomfortable tightness wound around his spine between his shoulders.

He closed the laptop and shoved his gear in his bag. They had an early morning flight, and he couldn’t miss it.

. . .

He slept surprisingly well for the few hours that he managed to grab before taking a Lyft to the airport. He was the last one to arrive, but only because he’d stopped to get coffee and breakfast for the team. He may have been distant lately, and he might be slowly going (more) insane, but he still knew the Unsolved Team’s Starbucks orders. Okay, he also had them written down in his phone, so sue him. It wasn’t until he was passing paper and plastic cups around that he realized there were two drinks left over—his, and a ridiculous iced thing with caramel that belonged to—was supposed to be for—

He must have zoned into the coffee for too long, because Mark—stable, wonderful, solid mark, was clapping a hand to his shoulder. “Alright, Ryan?”

“I—yeah, I must have gotten one of someone else’s drinks, I have an extra” he said, gesturing vaguely to the coffees.

“You didn’t count yourself, dude, that one’s yours,” Mark said.

“No, the other one, with the—” _ice._ But there wasn’t one with ice, just his own skinny vanilla latte. Why had he thought he had an extra coffee? And why had that bothered him so much?

“Look, I don’t—don’t ask me to do _math,”_ he sputtered. Mark laughed and they downed their coffees as they went through the line to check their bags and filming gear, and by the time they made it through the ridiculousness of the TSA checkpoint, Ryan’s unease was fading and excitement was taking its place. They were headed to ghoul city, baybeee!

. . .

Sauer Castle was only half an hour from the Kansas City airport, and an hour from the Sallie House, where they had all been before, so shooting on location felt… not _fake_ exactly, but less immersive than when he fucked off through abandoned prisons or cabins an hour from the nearest McDonald’s. He had written this particular script a couple months before, so he read it for review as TJ and Mark set up static cams and checked audio levels.

He was halfway through it before he realized it felt fake because it was the first episode he would be filming without Shane.

The revelation wasn’t sparked by anything in particular, but it rocked him like a punch to the jaw, so vivid that he actually brought his hand up to his face as if he’d been hit.

Jesus, this was his first ghoul hunt without Shane, _and it had completely slipped his mind._ He’d been nervous about creepy shit, the way he always was, but there was none of the constant wrongness digging into his side like a stitch after running, no glancing off to the side where Shane should have been.

 _You wanna revisit that first theory, buddy?_ Shane asked, and the sound of his voice—clearer than it had been all week—made Ryan’s gut twist in ways he couldn’t get a handle on, which is how he ended up four feet from the front porch of the most haunted mansion in Kansas, puking.

“Okay,” he breathed, wiping his mouth with tissues from the van glove box a minute later. “Okay, alright, _fuck._ ” This was—this was something else. One of Ryan’s biggest fears was being found out as nuts, certifiably crazy, absolutely off his rocker—but if sanity felt like that, like forgetting Shane as if he’d never existed, Ryan didn’t want it.

 _You know, I think there’s something to be said about only crazy people_ wanting _to be crazy._

“Shut up, Shane,” Ryan said automatically.

“Sorry, who?” Mark asked from behind him. Ryan jumped.

“Jesus, warn a guy!”

“Well, I didn’t know you were back here,” Mark said, unperturbed. He glanced down at the crumpled tissues on the van floor. “You alright?”

“Fine. Think I ate something weird, it’s fine now.” Ryan flashed him a thumbs-up around the tissues in his fist and a watery smile.

“Alright man, if you’re sure.”

Mark got whatever he’d come for out of the van, and the two of them went back to the living room of the house, where Ryan had left his script and notes. “Hey, before we film,” he said to the room at large. “Anyone got a pen I can borrow?”

. . .

The episode was… alright. He was self-conscious, aware that there was no serious counterpart and much less witty banter than he was used to. The crew didn’t say anything about it. _Guess to them, this is normal, watching me freak out alone._ That was an odd thought, and it made him brush over the spot on his left wrist, right above where his sleeve stopped, where he’d written _**#Shaniac**_ in black pen. It was stupid, almost juvenile, and he wasn’t sure why he chose the dumb hashtag instead of Shane’s name, but it was somehow reassuring. He hadn’t read a lot of comments on Unsolved episodes while researching except to scan for Shane’s name, but he did notice there was a smaller skeptic presence there, and that’s what Ryan was missing. The cool logic, the straight-stated skepticism bordering on exasperated eye-rolls. Every time he thought he heard something on the spirit box or his flashlight flickered, he rubbed over the ink with his right thumb and tried to think of what Shane would say. He didn’t get many full sentences from brain-Shane, but he got words like _wind_ and _shoes_ and _probably rats, Ry_ in the timber of his voice, and that was enough.

The original plan was to sleep in the Sauer Castle, but by the time the rest of the filming wrapped up, Ryan was worn thin, feeling like the slightest breeze might knock him over, either physically or into the yawning darkness of panic that was looming just to his back.

“Devon,” he began. “Could I—”

“You wanna call it here?” she asked, not unkindly. Relief flooded through him like heat after a strong shot of alcohol.

“Can I?”

Devon shrugged. “We have plenty of footage. You’re the one who insists on sleeping in these dumps, Ryan, it’s your call.”

Ryan opened his mouth to object, to point out that he only agreed to sleep on location once he convinced Shane to come along, but closed it when he realized Devon would then ask him what the fuck he was talking about.

“Thanks, Dev,” he said instead. She gave his shoulder a squeeze.

“Any time, man,” she said, and she sounded so much like Shane that Ryan thought he might cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Sauer Castle is real and in KC. Sorry for not writing out the episode more, I thought I’d save that for next chapter =)


	3. All my demons invading

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is unintentional self-harm in this, as in someone not in their right mind doing something Too Hard that causes injury & some blood
> 
> Brief discussion of hospitalization for mental health purposes and fear of that idea but no actual hospitals.
> 
> Major injury described in a non-graphic or gory way.  
> Get ready for the ghosties.

Ryan didn’t forget again after that, though how much of that was the fact that he could dive back into Shane-related research and how much was sheer, bull-headed determination, it was hard to say. He set an alarm on his phone, on the hour, that said _Shane Alexander Madej._ Between the alarm and the writing on his arm, which he’d taken to refreshing pretty constantly, he was kept on his toes.

And then the responses to his emails started coming in.

The responses from the Madejs was basically, _Sorry, no one we know has that name. Do you mean our cousin Sean or our uncle Alex?_ Ryan followed up on every new person they suggested, just in case, but none of them were Shane. The podcasters and video makers were more varied. Some told him to fuck off and stop trying to spread publicity for whatever bit he was gonna do. Others sent him their Mandela Effect research but didn’t have anything about Shane. One asked if this was like “Did You Dream About This Man?” which Ryan looked up with some excitement until he saw the sketch and read that it was a kind of viral art marketing campaign.

Every time he got a new response, his pulse quickened, his throat got dry, and his hands shook as he opened it. And every time he realized it led nowhere, he was reduced to that panicky, shaky, sweaty version of himself that he’d been the day he realized Shane wasn’t there.

The cycle was… exhausting.

Ten days after Shane’s disappearance, the last of his queries came up empty. He’d been holding out hope for the last Medej he’d contacted, somehow, like if there was still an unanswered like of communication, then there was still hope. Still hope that Shane was out there somewhere, or someone else was missing him. Still hope that someone else realized the world as they knew it had been replaced by an emptier, more serious, less bright version.

_Sorry, Mr. Bergara,_ the email said. _I’m an amateur genealogist and I’ve gone through all my research and my family tree records, but as far as I can tell, there’s no Shane (or Sean) Alexander in the Madej history, and definitely not one from Illinois. I’m sorry I can’t help you. I hope you find what you’re looking for!_

_I don’t know what I’m looking for,_ Ryan thought desperately, and then he was trembling again, hands clenched into fists and hot tears coursing down his cold, clammy face. He couldn’t breathe, his sobs trapped somewhere between his chest and his throat and coming out like hiccups. No, he couldn’t lose it like this, he still had work to do. He had to find out what had happened to Shane.

He managed to unclench his fists enough to get a pen on his hand, and then he was tracing _**#Shaniacs**_ on his wrist until the letters looked like foreign glyphs and the ink was tacky and reflecting the light with a reddish gleam. _What would Shane do?_ he asked himself desperately. _If you were missing, what would Shane do?_

_Well,_ Shane said pensively from Ryan’s head. _I’d chill on the ghosty research a little bit and look at good ol’ cause and effect, my friend._

As if anything could have _caused_ this, as if anything Shane could have said to a goddamn ghost could have gotten him murked from the whole fucking _universe—_

_Woah, woah, something_ I _did?_ Shane asked, and the offended tone of his voice was so real that Ryan looked up and could almost see him leaning up against the bookshelf, sleeves rolled up and hands resting above his elbows. He was wearing a reddish-purple flannel shirt and a beanie, and his ghost-hunting boots, which were muddy and wet. This set off bells somewhere deep in Ryan’s head, like small-town church bells rung at noon, but he couldn’t get a grasp on it, couldn’t quite figure out what he was supposed to be remembering— 

“Ryan?” A voice from the other side of the room, behind the cameras. Ryan glanced up, the feeling of _almost remembering_ slipping away from him like a dream after waking. “Are you—Jesus, you’re bleeding!” It was TJ, and he was coming forward briskly now, all those dad-instincts on high alert for some reason. Ryan glanced down and saw bright red on his wrist, running down to his palm, staining his jeans where he’d been resting his shaking hand.

“Oh,” Ryan said blankly.

“Are you okay? You look like—” TJ was down on one knee to Ryan’s side, and had swiveled Ryan’s chair so he could get a better look. He glanced from Ryan’s bleeding left wrist to the pen in his right hand, and Ryan followed his eyes. Oh. The tip of the pen was also red. That wasn’t great. “Ryan,” TJ said, all the worry in his voice replaced with a kind of cold calm Ryan didn’t think he ever heard before. “Can I have that, please?”

Ryan handed it over, would have handed it over even without the blatant sound of command in TJ’s voice, and then TJ was tucking it into his own back pocket and reaching for a bandana from his other pocket, probably another one of those dad habits, gotta carry something to wipe off those pesky bodily fluids! TJ pressed it to Ryan’s wrist, and when Ryan hissed in pain they both looked at each other.

“What the fuck, Ryan?” TJ asked.

“I didn’t—I wasn’t trying to hurt myself, I was just—just writing something.”

“Hard enough to bleed? And _not notice?_ ” TJ shook his head, lifted the bandana to check the damage, and frowned. “What does it say?” 

“I—” Ryan stopped, swallowed. “It—nothing,” he said. “It’s not important.”

He expected an argument, an insistence, and he was scrambling to come up with a valid alternative to what he’d really written when TJ said, “Give me your research.”

“What?”

“Your research,” TJ repeated. “This episode you’ve been working on for True Crime, I want to see it.”

“You—it doesn’t—”

“Ryan,” TJ said, pressing the bandana back to his wrist and avoiding his eyes, though whether that was for his sake or Ryan’s, Ryan couldn’t tell. “Last week, when you were out sick—Sara talked to me after she took you home.”

Ryan’s breath caught and his head filled with staticky denial. No, he’d been doing so well, he’d been keeping himself looking normal, he’d been trying so _hard—_

“She didn’t give me details,” TJ continued. “But she asked me to keep an eye on you. Was worried you seemed spooked, like something big had happened at home but you wouldn’t talk about it. And I’ve been giving you space, man, but to be honest, I’m worried about you, and all you’ve done other than the Kansas City trip since then is hole up in here and research that case. I wanna see it.”

Ryan wanted to argue, wanted to tell TJ to fuck off, wanted _anything_ other than that, but he just nodded and put TJ’s bandana on the desk while he uploaded everything to his Dropbox and shared it.

“Before—before you read it,” he said, and his voice sounded hoarse and quiet from crying. “Just—TJ, promise me that if you think I—if you—promise if I need to—go somewhere, you—I want to—to go on my own power. No sirens. Okay?” He couldn’t look at his friend, couldn’t say anything more coherent, just stared at his feet . TJ was quiet for a long moment.

“Okay, Ryan,” he said. “If you can promise me—I mean, fucking _swear a goddamn oath,_ you understand me—that you’ll be safe overnight, we can talk tomorrow. Okay?

“I swear on—” _On Shane, on his life._ “—on my life, on Unsolved, I promise. I’ll—I’m not going to do anything.” Ryan made himself look up and meet TJ’s eyes, and TJ held his gaze for a long time.

“Get that cleaned up and go home, Ryan. The Portland episode airs tomorrow and we’re gonna get this figured out and shoot a Post Mortem and everything will be fine, okay?”

“Okay,” Ryan agreed, feeling absolutely anything but.

. . .

He didn’t eat when he got home, or even try to sleep, despite the way his eyes felt heavy and dry. He turned on a Lakers highlights reel but didn’t see it, scrolled through his phone and didn’t read any of it. There was dread in his gut, a panicked certainty keeping a litany in his head.

_He’s gonna commit you when he reads that shit he’s gonna call the goddamn loony bin they’re gonna take you away and there’s nothing you can do to stop them now you finally crossed the goddamn crazy line my friend—_

Finally, just to give himself something vaguely goal-oriented to do, he loaded up the episode of Unsolved: Supernatural that was airing the next day to prepare himself for the Q & A, like TJ had suggested. 

The farm outside of Portland was full of all kinds of weird, full of Pacific Northwest lore, and it twisted ghosts and cryptid appearances together in one fifty-acre horrorshow perfect for the Season 6 premiere. They’d actually spent an extra day in Oregon, because the rain had been so bad the first time they tried to film that they’d all just been miserable. The second day hadn’t been much better, but they only had permission for the weekend, and it wasn’t like they wanted to fly back to LA with nothing, so they all gone out in the rain and fog and the boot-sucking mud—

The mud. There was something about the _mud._

Ryan paused the video during his own voice-over of the farm’s history as the certainty grabbed him in the gut like a fish hook to the meat of his palm. There was something he was supposed to remember about the rain, about his boots—and Shane’s boots—and the goddamn _mud._ It poked him like a fucking nail in his shoe, but he couldn’t quite reach it.

He hit play on the episode, trying to take it in around the discomfort, and it was mostly working, until the last seven minutes.

“Lastly, we decided to investigate the old well at the edge of the former fields.,” he heard himself say, tinny through the computer speakers. He knew this already, had written several script drafts and had read it aloud to Shane on-set and in the voice-over booth, so why did he feel glued to his screen suddenly, as if there was an answer there? “This well was the second created on the property. Rumor has it that the original well, which was the source of drinking water for the property from its inception, was the site of several tragedies, including the death of Celeste Cousin’s only child, who fell into the well and drowned.

“Stories say that Celeste had repeatedly asked her husband Michael to fill the well, both before and after her son’s death, but he refused, saying if she wanted a new well, she should dig one herself and, quote, ‘pray she could find water,’ end quote. 

“Six months after her son’s death, Celeste’s husband Michael mysteriously disappeared, and was never heard from again. After his death, this well was dug on the property, where Celeste lived until her death, seven years later, from tuberculosis. Today, only the second well remains, and the first has never been re-discovered.

“According to local legend, if the original well is ever recovered, Celeste will grant a wish to its finder in exchange for their silence, so that the well remains filled in.”

The episode cut to them walking through the rain towards a small ring of uneven stones—the second well—and Ryan felt a _doubling_.

It was like there were two clips playing on top of each other, a double exposure in motion. In one, Ryan walked ahead of the camera crew alone, his own hand-held up in front of him, water pouring down his blue raincoat. In the other, there was a second figure, a tall man holding an absurd golf umbrella in pink and purple aloft over both of them.

_Shane!_ The sight of him, even his covered back, sent an electric charge through him. It was the first proof of Shane that Ryan had seen in weeks, and he grasped at it like a drowning man clinging to rescue. He reached out to pause the video, take a screenshot, anything to prove it, but then the doubling stopped, and he was left looking at his own back on the screen.

_The mud on his goddamn boots—_

_“Something_ I _did?”_

_Grant a wish to its finder—_

_“Oh, come on, Ryan, you don’t think it’ll actually_ do _anything—”_

The memory washed over him like cold water, leaving him breathless and open-mouthed on the couch.

. . .

They were fighting through overgrown grass and underbrush and mud in search of the original well. The rain was so loud that he and Shane were almost shouting to be heard, not by the mics, but just their own ears.

“But wouldn’t it be cool to find it?” Ryan was saying, excited. 

“Ryan, it’s a hole in the ground,” Shane argued with a sigh. His hair was wet and he looked ridiculous under the pink and purple umbrella, like a cat dunked unceremoniously in a bathtub. “You’re more likely to find it by falling into it and breaking your ankle than having it grant you a wish.”

“Come on, admit it, it would be a little bit cool. We never get to investigate positive creepy stuff!”

“Positive creepy stuff,” Shane repeated slowly.

“Shut up, you know what I mean! What would you wish for?”

“Swirled peas,” Shane deadpanned.

Ryan giggled. “Not like, immortality, or—?”

“Ryan, your _ghosts_ are immortal, and that didn’t work out to well for them.”

“Oh. Huh.” He hadn’t thought of that.

“What would _you_ wish for, Bergara?” 

Ryan thought about it, then flushed. “I, uh—” he began, and then there was an awful creaking sound, and he was falling.

The well had dried up somewhat since its original creation, and so the water was only knee deep. While that saved him from drowning, it didn’t do much in the way of lessening impact, so when Ryan landed, he broke both ankles, a hip, and a femur—not an easy thing to break.

He screamed. He knew he screamed, knew it was loud and keening and probably more of an animal sound than anything he’d ever made in his life, but he was distracted from it by a loud, female voice in his head.

_A wish for your silence,_ she said.

“Make it stop, Jesus Christ!” Ryan screamed. “It _hurts,_ make it stop _hurting—!”_

_Which thing?_ The voice asked, and God, he hadn’t expected ghosts to be so _pedantic._

“All of it, please, make everything that hurts _just go away—”_

And then there was nothing, until he took a video of himself locking his door at 8:03am on Monday morning.

. . .

His first thought was, _I was right!_

And then, on the heels of that— 

“It’s my fault,” he whispered, awestruck.

The memory bled away like a physical thing, a wave going out with the tide, and Ryan realized he was curled in on himself on his couch, his computer knocked askew and lying on the floor. As it left, it deposited something in its place, something Ryan hadn’t even realized he was missing.

The bone-deep ache in his chest that went with being irrevocably, entirely, ass-over-teapot in love with Shane Madej.

The pain was so physical he was gasping for breath, trying to wrap himself into a tighter ball on the too-small couch, not sure if it was his heart or brain or soul or _what_ that hurt, only that it was worse than the feeling of his leg breaking, even as it made him feel more like himself than he had in days. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed the absence of this, the way it knitted itself into his bones, into the tips of his fingers until they were so scared and so eager to touch, into his throat so he was proclaiming it to the world when he laughed at all of SHane’s stupid jokes. Shane was almost as much a part of him as Ryan himself was. The love burned, but it burned the way fire burned, something all the more dangerous because it was forced to be contained. Because he couldn’t just _tell_ Shane something like this. Because it was too bright, too much, and it would burn everything down.

There was an echo underneath it, a new hurt, something not fueled by love, but by guilt.

He had wished Shane Madej away, and he was the only one who knew how to get him back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I learned while researching something minor re: TJ that he was part of the January Buzzfeed layoffs and I’m mad about it but also not going to change this chapter because it’s fiction and I don’t want to, so there.
> 
> I also have no idea how the actual filming schedule works and I don’t like research, man, get me a personal Ryan Bergara as a research assistant or something.
> 
> -cough- Right, research assistant…
> 
> I really wanted to finish and post this all at once but worry not, Chapter 4 should be up by tomorrow and the fic rating may change to Explicit with it, not sure yet.


	4. New world, new sky

When the Buzzfeed Unsolved Network started live-streaming at 9:23am PT, only a small segment of its 2.1 million followers tuned in. After all, it was an odd time of day on a Friday, and there was an episode scheduled to come out later in the afternoon. Probably a glitch. Maybe a teaser of some kind. Definitely would be addressed in the Post Mortem, right? No big deal. But a small segment of 2.1 million was still a fair amount of people, and in the age of the internet, nothing stayed secret for long, which was how Ryan Bergara’s frantic, pale face drew in a few thousand viewers within the first few minutes of his stream. Once people started listening to him, really listening, the viewing jumped wildly.

“Everyone likes a lunatic,” Shane had said once. Ryan supposed he was proving him right.

He had grabbed his research for Portland, several portable chargers, and an old static cam that lived in his closet, and then he had rented a car, which was a surprisingly simple process at 5 in the afternoon on a Thursday. He put on his Ghoul Boys playlist, which had most of his favorite songs still but was notably missing the token Shane-songs he’d thrown in, and started driving.

It was fifteen hours to Portland, and he drove as fast as he dared to, his promise not to do anything stupid echoing guiltily in the back of his mind.

He made it to the main gate of the Cousin Farm several hours after sunrise, and that’s when he mounted his phone the best he could on the dashboard of the rental car, shuffled through his notes in his lap one last time, and slipped into his narration voice the best he could.

“Hello,” he said, and cleared his throat nervously. “And, uh, and welcome to a special episode of Buzzfeed Unsolved: Supernatural. I know you’re probably wondering why I’m live-streaming this instead of uploading an episode normally, and honestly the regular episode might be scheduled to upload while I’m still streaming, but uh. I have... an important case for you all today.” He exhaled nervously and ran a hand through his hair. Those who had already tuned in could see his throat moving as he swallowed, and the stream chat was filled with questions about his well-being

_Woah, Ryan, did you like, not sleep?_

_Idk what’s happening but you’re really bringing the spook today, Boogara_

_yo dude you don’t look well are you ok???_

_twist: Ryan’s about to reveal he’s been a ghost this whole time!_

“Today I want to talk about the Mysterious Disappearance of Shane Madej,” Ryan said, feeling confidence ebb back into his voice as he fell into the cadence of the episode, the easy inflection of a script he’d written for himself. If his hands were shaking around his notes, who would care? He was bringing the spooks, ramping up for the Boogaras. This is what he _did,_ Shane or no Shane, and he knew he was good at it.

“On May 16, 1986, Shane Alexander Madej was born to parents Sherry and Mark Madej outside of Chicago, Illinois. The family settled in Schaumburg where two years later, they welcome younger brother, Scott, to the family as well.

“By all accounts, Shane Madej led an ordinary life. He attended Schaumburg High School, graduating in 2004, and went on to major in film at Columbia College in 2008. From there, Shane worked at a series of odd jobs, including at a local movie theater, between 2008 and 2012, when he moved to Los Angeles.

“And this is where our story goes off the rails.”

Ryan knew he was streaming, but he was conditioned to think of episodes as things to be cut together later, inserting the gag in his head where there would be one in post. He heard the comedic, dramatic tire-screech sound in his mind, combined with some animatic or another, even though all his steadily-growing audience would see was the way his jaw tightened as he prepared to keep speaking. He looked up, making virtual eye-contact with his phone camera, and said the next segment without looking down at his notes a single time.

“In 2013, Shane started as an intern at Buzzfeed, and in 2014, he produced his first Buzzfeed video, _Unusual Facts About Diet Coke._ While all this sounds pretty normal, there’s a catch—there _is_ no Buzzfeed video called _Unusual Facts About Diet Coke,_ and there is no record of Shane Madej.

_What the fuck is this??? Since when is BFU a, like, found footage movie thing?_

_Holy shit wHAT_

_wait is Ryan saying he met a ghost at work?_

_!!!!!!! SPOOPY !!!!!!!_

_well he’s right there’s no video called that I just checked_

_yeah no diet coke video wtf Ryan_

_uuuuuh Ry are u on drugs or ?_

“At this point, let’s establish our timelines, one which we’ll call the Boogara timeline, with all my memories and things I’m about to tell you, and one called the Skeptic timeline, which is the timeline all of you are familiar with. We’ll come back to this in a minute.

“In the Boogara timeline, Shane joined my intern cohort in 2013. We both did odd projects and assisted on various articles and videos but didn’t work together directly until 2015, when we did videos for Buzzfeed IRL that eventually became the Test Friends.”

Ryan paused, frowning. He laughed, a mirthless sound, and shrugged at the camera. “Actually, to be honest with you,” he saids, switching to his banter voice effortlessly. “I never even thought to check if there are Test Friend videos in the—in this timeline, in the Skeptic timeline, so you might not even know what I’m talking about, but, uh—we—I’m gonna keep on going.” He took a swig from his water bottle, found his place in the script, and kept on

.”On February 4, 2016, I started Buzzfeed Unsolved. As most of you know, for most of the first year, my co-host was Brent Bennett. Then, according to what I remember, Shane Madej took over as co-host in the Boogara timeline starting with the episode about the Mysterious Disappearance of the Sodder Children in December of 2016.

“As far as I can tell, I am the only person who remembers this event.”

_WHAT OH MY GOD_

_Man I have no idea what this is a promo for but I’m excited_

_omg do you think BFU is gonna make a movie?_

_wtf Ryan???_

_listen I’m a Boogara at heart but this is a lot_

_ugh why, I can deal with ghosthunting but yukking it up for ratings really sucks_

_^^^ what you said, I can dig ghosts but this is just stupid_

“Two weeks ago, on March 18, 2019, I arrived to the Buzzfeed office in LA only to find that none of my coworkers remembered Shane Madej. I played back Unsolved episodes and Post Mortems and found no trace of him on film. When I—”

He was distracted suddenly by a notification on his silenced phone. A phone call. Oh, shit, it was TJ.

Ryan swiped the call to voicemail and grimaced. “Uh, sorry,” he said. “That was—that’s the Teej-monster, he’s calling me. TJ, if you’re watching this, I’m really sorry. I promise if this is a bust I’ll come home, okay?”

He thought of his last promise to TJ, of TJ’s last promise to _him,_ and wondered if it still held, or if he’d end up bundled into an ambulance in restraints on a livestream that was quickly climbing to 7,000 people. He decided not to think about it.

“Where was I? Uh. When—when I asked my colleague, Sara Rubin, if she had heard from Shane lately, she insisted she had no idea who I was talking about, despite my memories of the two having dated for close to two years. Similarly, upon reaching out to known members of Shane’s family and significant people in his life before Buzzfeed, everyone I spoke to professed to know nothing about my co-host, or even that I had one. Upon further research, I could find no evidence of Shane anywhere on the internet, including in my own personal archives of photos, text messages, and other communications.

“So,” Ryan said, and he paused again, glancing at his phone which was now receiving text messages, emails, and Twitter DMs from his friends at an alarming rate. “So,” he repeated, thinking, _talk to Shane. You’re telling the story to Shane._

“Let’s get into the theories.”

. . .

He laid out his three theories to his audience the same way he’d laid them out to his reflection the week before. One: He had either been suffering under a delusion that he’d had a co-host until he woke up the previous Monday, or he was suffering under a delusion that he _did not_ have a co-host now.

“However,” he said, after having spent a fair amount of time trying to make sense of this one in particular. “Neither version of this theory seems likely, as if it were true, there would be evidence. For example, if I had been acting as if I had a co-host that other could not see, I would see evidence of this on the recordings for Unsolved here in the Skeptic timeline. On the other hand, if I was imagining Shane’s disappearance, there would be no reason why our co-workers would be denying his existence or why they would not have intervened with mental health support.”

Two: It was a bit. That theory was as quickly debunked in his narration as it was explained, for most of the same reasons—there would be signs.

“Which brings us to theory number three: while on set for Supernatural in the Boogara timeline, Shane and I encountered something legitimately otherworldly, or otherwise supernatural, which either caused me to be moved to a new timeline, or for Shane to be erased from one. Either way, if we subscribe to this theory, which I’m more and more convinced to do, I think I know where this event occurred, and this is why I’m streaming for all of you now.

“The episode scheduled to come out today is about the Cousins Farm in Oregon, about an hour outside of Portland. There are a lot of reported sightings and phenomena at this location, but the part I want to focus on is the old well at the edge of the property…”

He went through his blurbs about the legend of the well again, aware even as he was doing it that he hit some of the same vocal patterns and cadences as the already-recorded voice-over for the real episode. _So I have a schtick,_ he thought. _So sue me._

 _You’re asking a lot for someone who didn’t even know the word “schtick” until last year,_ Shane’s voice said, and it sounded so real that he almost stopped to look to the passenger seat and see if Shane was sitting there. He didn’t, but God, he wanted to. Without having to think too much about what he was saying, the familiar desperate thrum was rising up in him, a vibration on a string he didn’t know he was holding and didn’t know how to cut. It made him feel unsteady, off balance, but in the way roller coasters or huge surprises made him feel off balance. He thought again about how strange it had been getting this feeling back, and how uncomfortable he felt looking back on the week and a half where it wasn’t there, this mad rush of need and want and fear. 

But there was no more time to dwell on it, because he was at the end of his script about the well and Celeste’s wishes, and he had to talk again, to pull words out his head instead of off his paperwork.

“So, in my timeline—in the Boogara timeline—I remember falling into the well, where I was injured. Right after falling, I remember hearing a female voice, who asked me, quote, ‘A wish for your silence,’ unquote. Because of my injuries, I believe the wording of my wish was unclear, which led to the splitting of the timelines, as well as Shane’s disappearance.”

There was a small pang about lying, or at least omitting, but he didn’t think now was the time for declaring his love to the world. Not when Shane didn’t know. Not when there _was_ no Shane to know.

“I have one more theory. As you’ve noticed, I’m not at Buzzfeed right now.” He took his phone from the dashboard, swiveling around so they could see the interior of the car and the vague hint of greenery outside. “I’ve returned to Cousins Farm, because I think that the only way to undo this is to back out of the deal I made with Celeste Cousins, or whatever entity granted my so-called wish. I’m going to go back onto the farm, and I’m going to reveal the location to all of you. My theory is that, once I do this, my silence will be broken and Celeste will revoke the wish, reuniting the timelines and restoring Shane’s life.

“So… here we go, I guess,” he said, taking a deep breath and opening the car door.

The plan had solidified as he drove. When he left LA, he hadn’t been thinking much beyond _go back to the well_ and _film it for proof_. But this… this would work. _This had to work,_ he thought to himself as he juggled his phone and straddle-climbed the locked fence.

 _You sure?_ Shane asked in his head.

“No,” Ryan breathed. Then he was walking towards the far side of the property. As he walked, his phone rang again. TJ. He deliberated for a second, and then swiped to accept it on speaker phone.

“Hey, Teej,” he said. “You’re on the air.”

“Ryan,” TJ said, and he sounded like he was trying to talk down an angry dog. His voice echoed strangely through the phone and back through the stream. “Hey man. We’re worried about you.”

“I’m fine,” Ryan said, breathless from movement and zig-zagging around the debris scattered across the old fields. “It’s fine, I’m just—”

“Ryan, you’re not fine.” This wasn’t TJ’s voice.

“Hi, Devon,” he said.

“You’re gonna hurt yourself out there, Ry,” she said. “You practically fell in the actual well the first time.”

“I know where I’m going this time,” Ryan argued. “I have to do this.”

“ _Why,_ Ryan?” TJ said, sounding exasperated. 

_Because I love him,_ Ryan thought desperately.

 _You softie!_ brain-Shane exclaimed, sounding gleeful.

“Because I have to know,” Ryan said aloud, and for the first time since he started streaming, his voice cracked. 

“Jesus, Ryan, ghosts aren’t worth—” TJ began.

“Not ghosts,” Ryan rasped. “I need to know if I’m crazy.” There was a long silence there, as if neither Devon nor TJ knew what to say. “I’m gonna hang up now,” Ryan said. “Bye, guys.” He did hang up, re-focusing on the high grass, trying to orient himself. He used the farmhouse to his right and the well ahead of him to try and triangulate the best he could.

He pulled the printed screen-grab from his pocket, held it up in the hand that wasn’t holding his phone, squinted at it like he was reading a map. He thought of the memory, of Shane’s stupid gangly body next to his, his grumpy, tired, beautiful face bathed in pinkish light from that stupid umbrella, of Shane asking, _What would you wish for, Bergara?_

“I take it back,” Ryan said. “I take it back, you fucking bitch. Keep your fucking silence, I want _Shane._ ”

And he stomped down as hard as he could on the wet, rotted wood in front of him, making sure the camera caught the way the splinters fell, and the distant sound of water.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I absolutely made up some of Shane’s biography/timeline because there is no good wiki page on him. I need me a Ryan for research okay? Truly. I’ve also never seen a single Test Friends video because I’m new to YouTube/Buzzfeed RPF and I didn’t want to waste time on a deep dive, I wanted to FINISH THIS THING.
> 
> I have never live-streamed on YouTube so I have no idea if you can take phone calls while streaming, but if we can handle ghost wishing-well alternate timelines then we can handle some technical inaccuracies right?
> 
> I know I said this was 4 chapters but it’s 5. But I’m posting it all at once so…. same diff right?


	5. For this life I cannot change

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter title from BUTTERFLY EFFECT by Travis Scott; all the other titles are from CAROUSEL.
> 
> Sorry for an extra chapter, it just felt like a good place to break. Here’s our happy ending, babes. Please note updated rating and tags.

Ryan’s head was ringing, and he saw stars, and—what the _fuck_ — 

“Woah, hey!” There was a concerned voice, a grip on his shoulder. “Holy shit, Ryan, you alright?”

“I—what—?” Christ, his head hurt. There was a soreness in his spine that felt like he had fallen, hard, on his ass. He blinked, hard, to clear his head, and saw a pair of muddy boots under damp teal chinos.

_Ghost-stompers,_ he thought. Then, on the heels of that, _Fucking gangly asshole, Madej._

...wait.

“Shane!” he croaked, trying to scramble to his feet. His own boots slipped on the mud and his hands were covered in rain water and wet grass. This was apparently not a deterrent for Shane, who reached out with one of his huge, strong hands and helped pull Ryan to his feet.

“That’s me,” Shane agreed, and Ryan heard a note of anxiousness in his voice. “Done trying to jump straight to hell?”

Ryan glanced around and saw a ragged hole in rotten wood not three feet in front of him. A glance down at himself revealed wet splinters clinging to one pant-leg. “It—I wasn’t—”

“Lucky I have—whaddaya call ‘em—spider arms?”

“You caught me,” Ryan said, more as an attempt to put his brain in order than as a question. 

“Sure did,” Shane agreed, and something about the way he said it made Ryan turn back to look at him.

Shane was soaked. The stupid umbrella was lying behind them in the mud, and Shane “raincoats don’t fit people my size” Madej was rapidly growing soggier, the maroon of his flannel darkening to an almost-black, water spattered across his glasses like dewdrops. He didn’t look uncomfortable so much as tense, something flickering in his eyes that Ryan couldn’t place.

“Shane,” he breathed.

“Ryan,” Shane said, but before he could attempt to say anything else, Ryan had flung himself around him, hands gripping the back of Shane’s shirt so hard he felt the water wring out of it. Shane gripped him back after a moment, giving him a small pat on one shoulder. He made a small sound in his throat but said nothing, only let Ryan squeeze him as if his life depended on it.

There were wet footsteps on the grass as the crew approached, panting with the effort of quick movement while weighed down with gear.

“Are you okay?” Devon asked. “I thought you fell, Ryan, Jesus—”

But Ryan wasn’t listening. He let go of Shane’s shirt and pushed him gently on the chest. Shane took this as a sign of discomfort and let Ryan go, but before he could step back properly, Ryan’s numb fingers did what they’d intended the first time and wrapped themselves in the fabric at Shane’s collarbone, using it to balance as he hauled himself up and planted a kiss solidly onto Shane’s open, unexpecting mouth.

“Mmph!” said Shane.

“Sorry,” said Ryan a moment later, letting go of his friend and stepping back to look at him properly. Shane’s face was reddish, as if he was under the umbrella again, and he was gaping at Ryan wordlessly. “I just—Jesus, Shane, no one knew who you _were,_ not even Sara, it was _awful—”_

“Are you—what are you t—” Shane stammered.

“—and I thought I was going _crazy,”_ Ryan interrupted, words spilling out of him like the rain from the farmhouse gutters. “Like legitimately crazy, and I kept hearing you in my _head—”_

“Ryan—”

“—and I know you won’t believe me, but it was because of the wish, I fucked it up and I wished for things to stop hurting because I fell and broke my leg and she took _you—”_

“Ryan, I don’t—”

“—she took _you_ because I _love you_ and it’s fucking _killing me_ but I don’t care, Jesus Christ, I’m so glad you’re here—”

_“Ryan!”_ Shane shouted, so uncharacteristically loud that Ryan’s panicked chatter died off. Ryan came back to himself somewhat, the only sound the patter of the rain and his own quick breaths. Mark and TJ had stepped back and were conversing in very low whispers, and Devon had turned away but had a hand over her mouth, as if she was shocked, or covering a grin.

“Shit,” Ryan said. 

“Uh-huh,” Shane agreed. He ran a hand through his wet hair.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

Shane held up a hand and Ryan fell silent. “Can we… can we just… go back to the hotel? You almost died and then y—I think if I—I’m an old man, Ryan, I’m gonna have a fucking—you’re gonna give me a heart attack.”

“Sorry,” Ryan said, face flaming suddenly. “I didn’t—”

“Hotel,” Shane repeated, sounding strangled. “Dry clothes. Coffee. Please.”

“Okay,” Ryan agreed, and he let Shane lead the way off of the farm.

_Good riddance,_ Ryan thought as they opened the gate, and he shuddered.

. . .

The entire ride back to the hotel was quiet. Devon turned on one of her driving playlists in the van, and Shane took shotgun for the leg room. Ryan sat in the very back and dozed with his head pressed against the cold glass of the window. His head really did hurt after whatever he’d done when he fell backwards, away from the well. He couldn’t even check his phone—it had apparently been in his hand and it had tumbled down into the water. He didn’t really sleep, just let himself drift in the familiar sounds of Devon’s van music and the low voices of his friends. _Especially Shane’s voice,_ he thought to himself, and that caused another flush to rise up his neck and settle in his cheeks, but he was too exhausted to care.

They stumbled into the hotel, parting ways in the corridor. Shane unlocked the hotel door, and Ryan was ready to have a discussion about shower order or who was going to go get decent coffee, but as soon as Shane dropped his bag he sat down at the edge of one of the double beds.

“Sit,” he said, gesturing to Ryan’s bed.

Ryan sat, and their knees almost hit together in that narrow channel of nothingness between hotel beds.

“Explain,” said Shane, and there it was again, that tension in his voice that Ryan couldn’t identify.

“The—the kiss, or—”

“All of it. Tell me the whole thing, Ryan.”

“You won’t believe me,” Ryan said, suddenly worried. “You think I made it up, that—that—”

Shane took his glasses, smeared with rain, off of his face, and ran one hand down it from forehead to chin, like someone who had just woken up. “Ryan,” he said, sounding like he was using the last of his patience. “Please.”

And he was never able to resist Shane, especially a Shane who said _please,_ so Ryan did. He started with taking a video of himself locking his door on Monday morning—a Monday that _hadn’t happened yet,_ how was _that_ for some weird shit?—and did his best to walk Shane through the rest of the ten or so days Ryan had existed in the other timeline, or world, or delusion, or whatever it was. He didn’t leave anything out this time; not the wording of his wish, or the revelation about his feelings. He put it all in order as best he could while Shane watched him intently, two feet away.

“And so I broke the agreement,” Ryan said finally. “I showed everyone watching the stream where the well was, I broke my silence, so she took back the wish.”

There was silence for a long time. Ryan realized he was covered in goosebumps, his wet clothes clinging to him uncomfortably, a small damp spot forming on the comforter where he sat, but he didn’t move, afraid of breaking whatever reverie Shane was in.

“You broke your leg,” Shane said finally.

“What?”

“When you fell, you said you broke your leg. Your femur.”

“Yeah, I mean, I’m—I didn’t get x-rays, I just—”

“Do you know how hard it is to break your femur?” Shane asked, and he was looking straight at Ryan, no glasses between them, something intense shifting in his expression.

“No, I—”

“It’s the strongest bone in your fucking body, Ryan. Snapping it is almost impossible.”

“Well I don’t know for _sure_ it was my—”

“You’re telling me,” Shane interrupted slowly, eyes still burning into Ryan’s forehead. “That, for—for _who knows how long,_ you—we—we’ve been filming Unsolved, doing Post Mortems, working at desks next to each other… and it hurt you worse than breaking your fucking femur.”

Ryan felt like he’d swallowed boiling water. 

“I didn’t mean—”

“Why didn’t you _say_ something?” Shane asked, practically growling. Ryan flinched. He knew it was a possibility that Shane would be angry, would feel like his very particular boundaries had been crossed, and he opened his mouth to explain, but Shane wasn’t done. “Jesus, did you really think—have I— _fuck._ ” And he didn’t _look_ angry. In fact, his chest hitched, and he made another throaty sound that Ryan didn’t understand, until Shane’s shoulders shook, and suddenly he did.

“Shane, God, don’t cry—” Ryan crossed the gap between his bed and Shane’s in one movement, fully intending to explain more, to make his friend see that it wasn’t a _bad_ pain, that Ryan had tasted his life without it and he didn’t want it, but before he could say any of that, Shane’s hands were on either side of his face, and Shane’s mouth was crashing up against his.

Shane kissed like he was the one who’d been trapped in a doomed timeline, like Ryan was about to disappear out from under him. He had one hand on the back of Ryan’s neck now, the other clenched into a shaking fist at the front of Ryan’s damp t-shirt. Ryan felt the trembling of his limbs, the way he couldn’t quite catch his breath, and he pressed his palms gently to Shane’s temples as he learned the taste of his mouth.

Eventually they broke for air, Shane trembling visibly and Ryan’s headache pounding with vigor against the staggered oxygen acquisition.

“You almost died, asshole,” Shane said after a few deep breaths. “You almost died and I didn’t even know.”

Ryan had nothing else to say to this so he just said, “You’re shaking.”

Shane glanced down at himself like he was just noticing. “Cold,” he said.

“Shower?” Ryan suggested.

“You first—”

“Together?”

“Oh.” Shane swallowed visibly. “Are—are you sure?”

Ryan barked a laugh. “I kind of don’t want to let you out of my sight right now,” he admitted. “I’m—I’m not entirely convinced you’re real.”

Shane looked at him for a moment and then nodded. “Okay.”

They shucked off their wet clothes and then Shane was in the shower before Ryan even realized he’d left the main room, water running hot enough to throw steam.

“I can—if you don’t want me to—I can sit here,” Ryan offered from his spot in the doorway.

“Get in here, Ryan, or so help me—”

“Okay, alright,” Ryan agreed, and he was grateful, because his teeth were starting to chatter. He pulled back the shower curtain and just… looked. Shane was beautiful. His pale skin flushed red under the hot water and droplets clung to his skin in odd places, dripped off his fingertips, ran down his abdomen until— _oh._

“You’re letting the warm out,” Shane said, but there was laughter in his voice. Ryan startled, then blushed. 

“Sorry,” he said, stepping in and closing the curtain.

“Here, let me—” They shifted awkwardly, Shane’s hands resting on Ryan’s shoulders as they traded places so Ryan could get the lion’s share of the hot water.

“ _God,_ that’s nice.” Ryan tipped his head back and let the water run over his face and down his neck and chest.

“Can I—is it okay if I touch you?” Shane asked.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah?” Shane’s hands were on Ryan’s waist then, not grabbing, just… resting. Ryan bit his lip against the sound that tried to escape from him. “This okay?”

“More than okay,” Ryan agreed, wondering if Shane could see the way his cock was hardening against his thigh.

“How’s this?” Shane asked, and then he was pressing up against Ryan’s back and Ryan could feel that he wasn’t the only one hard.

“Oh—wow, yeah. Okay.”

“Okay,” Shane agreed.

They stayed like that for a while, trading small touches in the warmth of the shower. Ryan didn’t put his hands anywhere near Shane’s cock even as they traded places into the spray of the shower—though he couldn’t say the same for his eyes—and Shane seemed to follow his lead. They kissed briefly, brushed hands against chests and necks, dancing around each other in the water.

“Can we—my fingers are puny,” Shane said finally. Ryan laughed.

“Can’t have that,” Ryan said, reaching over to turn off the water. “Wouldn’t want to mar the perfection.”

“Of my hands?” Shane asked.

“Oh, uh—” Ryan almost backtracked, but then thought, _fuck it, man, what do you have to lose?_ “I really… like your hands.”

“Oh.” Shane sounded genuinely surprised, and he wiggled his fingers in front of his face for a moment.

Ryan left him with that thought so he could grab towels, and they both stepped carefully around each other, drying off in the heat of the bathroom. Ryan was trying to get the towel, which was smaller than he wanted it to be, to twist properly around his waist when he heard Shane clear his throat. He turned to look at his friend, who had a towel slung over his shoulder but nothing around his hips to hide the fact that his cock was hard and flushed.

“Something on your mind?” Ryan asked, eyebrow raised.

“You,” Shane admitted with a small shrug, and the simplicity of it made warmth pool in Ryan’s stomach.

“You wanna—you gonna do something about it, Madej?” he asked, hoping he sounded more sure of himself than he felt.

Shane didn’t answer, just took a step—he only needed one, the goddamn Sasquatch—across the bathroom and kissed Ryan again.

It was different than before the shower. There was less tentative movement and more hunger, Shane’s teeth on Ryan’s bottom lip and Ryan sweeping his tongue across the roof of Shane’s mouth. Ryan wound his fingers into Shane’s hair and Shane gasped into Ryan’s mouth.

“Bed?” Ryan suggested breathlessly.

“ _God_ , yes,” Shane agreed.

The cooler air was a shock, but the heat of Shane’s hands on him made up for it. Shane backed Ryan up until he felt the edge of the bed at the backs of his legs, and then they were horizontal, tangling limbs and bumping noses awkwardly.

When Shane’s hand found Ryan’s cock between them, Ryan almost jumped out of his skin.

“Too fast?” Shane asked, pulling back.

“ _Fuck_ no,” Ryan breathed, bucking his hips up. “God, fuck, your _hands—_ ”

“That can be arranged,” Shane said, and Ryan hadn’t fully processed what he said when suddenly both of Shane’s hands were around him, solid and warm and just barely pressing in.

“Fuck! Jesus, Shane—”

“Good?”

“Yes, yes, fuck—”

He lost himself in it for a minute, all heat and friction, and then he remembered his goddamn manners and reached between them for Shane’s dick, which twitched so strongly under his hand that he laughed.

“Shh,” Shane said, face pressed into Ryan’s neck. 

“Emba—god, yeah—embarrassed, are we?”

Shane didn’t reply, just nipped at Ryan’s neck. Ryan stroked Shane slowly, relishing the weight of him, the impossible softness of his skin, and then he tapped on Shane’s hands, still wrapped around Ryan’s own cock. Shane let go and Ryan got his hand around both of them, squeezing.

“Oh, _oh—!”_ Shane choked out, getting with the program. He wrapped his hand partly over Ryan’s, so that they were both touching each other, slipping hot and wet against each other, and then Ryan stopped trying to orchestrate anything, because _Jesus fucking Christ_ that was good, that was so good, and it was _Shane’s hand—_

“Ryan, Ryan, Ryan, I’m gonna—”

“Yeah, yeah, me too, God—”

Shane came first, barely, and Ryan tumbled after him when he felt the hot wetness of Shane’s orgasm on his stomach. Shane’s hand had moved to hold his weight but Ryan stroked them both through it, letting go when he heard Shane’s breath in his ear reach something closer to a normal speed. Shane flopped down on the bed next to Ryan with a groan.

“You good?” Ryan asked.

“Jesus. Yes.”

They lay beside each other for a while, and at some point Shane’s hand found Ryan’s on the bed and laced his fingers into Ryan’s own.

Something pinged in Ryan’s brain then.

“Oh,” he said. “You _too?_ ” Shane only laughed. Ryan’s heart soared at the sound. 

Ryan was halfway to sleep when Shane said, “Hey, Ryan?”

“Mm?”

“I don’t believe in ghosts—”

“Shane—!”

“—but I do believe in you.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” Shane agreed, and he pressed a kiss against Ryan’s temple. 

Ryan thought that was the best argument for his sanity that he’d heard in a long time. After all, he didn’t trust his own brain, but he always trusted Shane Madej.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on [Twitter.](http://twitter.com/crashmargulies_)


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